The Billionaires: The Stepbrothers (Lover's Triangle 3)

Karina dabbed the corners of her eyes with her napkin. “I wondered when he’d stop coming in, but every day he continued to show up. After a month or so, he appeared a little less wrecked. Not quite so angry. He started drinking his coffee.

Glancing around the café, I guess really seeing it for the first time. Really seeing me for the first time. One day, he smiled. Not a full one. Just enough to express gratitude that I’d respected his space, his privacy. That I’d been there for him, in a sense.”

“I appreciate that,” Michael said her.

“I liked his quiet strength, his commanding presence, in the obvious face of tragedy,” Karina explained. “I didn’t speculate about what he did for a living or who he was. I was curious, of course. But mostly I was interested in what had brought him in that very first day and why he kept coming back.”

“So you eventually asked him,” Scarlet ventured.

“No. He was the one to start the conversation. I was about to take my break before a double shift started and he asked if I’d sit with him. He wanted to buy me a coffee. And a slice of pie.” She grinned, albeit shakily. “He said I looked like I could use more than one slice. I was rail thin back then, and I’m sure he could tell I couldn’t afford to splurge on dessert.”

Scarlet did not miss the shame that crossed the other woman’s beautifully made up face. The shame of being poor, of being a struggling single mother, of living in the hellish neighborhood she’d mentioned, had clearly been emotional baggage she’d brought to the Hamptons. Had not fully rid herself of even fourteen years later.

Scarlet found that intriguing. Karina was a humble woman. One with secrets, certainly. But she’d been fighting her demons since she set foot in this house. That resonated within Scarlet, because she’d witnessed Karina’s son battling his own mental monsters in a home he was supposed to have shared with his wife and child.

Scarlet’s gaze shifted to Sam, who sat stiffly. Perhaps he hadn’t known all of these things about his mother. The shame. The difficulties she’d confronted when moving here. The addictions.

Getting back to that, Scarlet asked, “How did you hide the gambling debt from your husband?”

Karina sipped her mimosa, then said, “I took out a private loan. Not with a bank,” she pointedly added.

“Ah. One of those types of loans.”

“Yes. All very shady-like, but also confidential.”

“Mother.” Sam sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come to me for the money?”

“Sam.” She shook her head again. “I never wanted you to know any of this. Of course I wouldn’t want you to know. Nor could I ever have asked you for help.”

He started to speak, but Scarlet asked Karina, “What did you use as collateral?” She didn’t want Karina getting sidetracked and drawing this out to be something more painful than it already was.

“The Vandenberg name, of course.”

That would go far, no doubt.

“But you said Mitcham knows,” Scarlet recalled.

Karina went back to fidgeting with her napkin. “I told him about the loan after he handed me the check. The initial debt wouldn’t have made a solid dent in the settlement money, but the substantial interest on the loan tipped the scales.”

“Jesus,” Sam muttered. And resumed his pacing.

Scarlet’s heart went out to him. To Karina, too, for having to reveal this dark truth to her own son. To both of them, really.

Michael draped an arm around Scarlet’s shoulders and asked, “Does that cover all the bases?”

Not wholly. But Scarlet felt she’d done enough damage for the day. She didn’t want to destroy this woman in Michael’s and Sam’s eyes.

She said to Karina, “I appreciate your candor. I know this hasn’t been easy for you, and I apologize for that. Please understand that I’m just doing my job. It’s nothing personal.”

Karina gave her a serious look. “It’s not?” Her gaze flitted from Scarlet, to Michael, and then to Sam.

“I’ve had to question them as well,” Scarlet said. “I haven’t been happy about it, but this is what I do. I have a responsibility to my client.”

“And you’re clearly quite talented in your field. I’m sure you were much easier on me than you would have been under different circumstances.”

Scarlet’s stomach twisted. Now her loyalty was divided. Because it was true. Scarlet would have driven harder from the onset were she not interviewing the mother of the two men she was sleeping with.

But that was another issue to obsess over when all was said and done. When this case was closed, how exactly could she continue her relationship with Michael and Sam? How could she ever return to this house, after the confession she’d forced from Karina, in front of her family?